Lupus and Autoimmune Center of Excellence
Andras Perl, MD, PhDThe funds from New York state's Empire Clinical Research Investigator Program were awarded to Upstate will be used to establish the Lupus, Autoimmunity, Inflammation and Immune Health Center of Excellence (LACE) at Upstate University Hospital. LACE will focus on the metabolic control of autoimmunity, inflammation and immune health.
The center will promote the development of clinician researchers and a web-based infrastructure will be designed to support clinical research, data capture and retrieval systems that will facilitate quality improvement and retrospective and prospective clinical studies.
The proposed center would build on current National Institutes of Health-supported programs which require high-resolution mass spectroscopy and imaging instrumentation. LACE is led by Upstate’s Andras Perl, MD, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and chief of Rheumatology. In support of the proposed center, Perl has been awarded three new grants from the NIH for basic and translational studies in lupus.
Beyond training fellows, the center will support new collaborative initiatives in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
“Dr. Andras Perl is one of Upstate Medical University’s top translational researchers and a world authority on lupus. Autoimmunity and inflammation are the root cause of a great many diseases plaguing the nation and the world, from psychiatric disorders to diabetes, and of course lupus. Dr. Perl’s center idea is important, timely and transformative.”
- David Amberg, PhD, VP of Research
Perl has been the director of the Rheumatology Fellowship Program at Upstate since 2003 and will serve as mentor for two additional ECRIP research fellows. Perl joined the Upstate faculty in 1992.